


The Tiresias Incident

by yumekuimono



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Asgardian Magic, Avenger Loki, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, FTM Tony, Genderfluid Loki, Genderqueer stuff, Genderswap, Oral Sex, Smut, magical theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 07:31:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11203302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yumekuimono/pseuds/yumekuimono
Summary: The Avengers find themselves suddenly transformed into the opposite sex. It's not all fun and games.The genderswap story with a twist + detailed magical theory that nobody asked for.[The smut is all in Chapter 2, so if that's not your jam you can skip]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** This is a story about transgender/genderqueer main characters in which their gender is a central issue. I, the author, am cis. I have put a lot of research and effort into balancing the exposition necessary to tell this story properly and **not** writing about The Experience of Being Trans because I know I cannot do that. I will be the first to admit that I may not have succeeded by absolutely everyone's standards. All I ask is that any criticism be respectful, please.

The sorceress Loki was dueling cut off abruptly in the middle of a spell when Captain America’s shield hit her in the head. He deflected the half-formed magic with ease, taking advantage of the distraction to cast his own binding spell. When one of Hawkeye’s arrows exploded at her feet as she staggered, the sorceress went down for good. Loki hadn’t cared enough to remember her name, but still he winced in sympathy as the Black Widow slipped in to lock restrictive iron manacles around her wrists.

Elsewhere on the street, the Hulk roared in confusion.

_Huh._ There was an opportunity.

Once the ground-level cleanup had been handed over to SHIELD, the Avengers and their probationary member gathered on the quinjet, save for Tony, who had bit out a flippant sign-off and sped home as soon as the battle was done. Thor was frowning, and Steve had his arms crossed uncomfortably underneath his chest.

“Loki, do you have an explanation for this?”

Natasha shifted a bit and widened her stance before settling in with an impassive expression.

“Oh, indeed. Our adversary meant, I assume, to target only me with her spell; however, directional intent is only encoded at the end of that style of chanted spellcasting. When your shield disrupted her focus, it was released without control, thus affecting everyone else on the battlefield at that time. Furthermore, you interrupted her in the middle of a phrase, which if I recall, I suggested you avoid doing for this very reason. We are fortunate that the concept of transformation, especially as between seemingly opposing states which are not in fact disparate, is a grounding principle of East Shostarian philosophy and is therefore common as an auxiliary placeholder in that language when the modifying verb comes at the end of a phrase, and furthermore that the last word the sorceress spoke was cut off such that the resulting declension marked it as a simple object complement and her altered tonal inflection due to being suddenly hit in the head changed its meaning to ‘gender as represented by physical manifestation’ rather than something distinctly more unpleasant—”

“That’s…all very well,” Bruce interrupted, huddled down more than usual under his modesty blanket, “but is it possible to reverse this?”

“It will require some time to set up, but yes, it should be fairly easy to undo the effects upon our return to the Tower.”

Bruce nodded and clutched the blanket closer to his chin.

Clint openly poked at one of his new breasts, then bounced on his heels a little. Of the five Avengers present, he seemed the least perturbed by this turn of events. “Hey, Nat, can I borrow a sports bra?” He blinked. “Ooh, my voice sounds weird.”

“You better—” Natasha cleared her throat subtly, “—not stretch the elastic out this time.” Three heads swiveled to look at her, and she raised an eyebrow. “You can’t all borrow my bras. Seriously, they won’t even fit, and Thor and Steve are well-endowed enough that you don’t want my espionage push-ups anyway.”

“Are you implying my boobs are _small?”_ Clint demanded.

Natasha cast a critical eye over his chest. “Well, they are. At least this way you can keep shooting without having to cut one off.”

“Is this common among Midgardian women?” Thor asked, seeming concerned.

“Nah, it’s just some old story.”

“Uh…if we could go back to the topic of support…?” Steve’s shoulders had inched towards his ears, which were now flushing red at the mention of ladies’ underthings despite his determined face.

“I _suppose_ I might lend you some of mine,” Loki sighed. “I can change the size to fit.”

Everyone turned with expressions of confusion.

She shrugged casually. “I change gender sometimes, of course I own brassieres. Now are we returning to the Tower or not?”

Natasha unzipped the top half of her uniform and wriggled out of the sports bra underneath, commenting, “Well, this is new.” She tossed it at Clint, who sniffed it, shrugged, and pulled it on before going to start up the ‘jet.

Loki discreetly estimated her teammates sizes, and conjured a hair tie to hand to Bruce. The spell, by dint of being an incomplete fragment, had been wildly unspecific. As a result Thor was still his usual large, muscular self, albeit with breasts and wider hips, while underneath his blanket Bruce seemed to be soft and shapely, long of leg with wavy chestnut hair falling nearly to his waist and partially obscuring a lovely heart-shaped face. Steve seemed to have landed somewhere in between the two with regards to body shape, and his blond hair was now in a cute pixie cut. A light dusting of freckles had appeared across his cheekbones. Natasha and Clint were still compact and practical, their gender of non-importance as it always was in the field. Off of it, Natasha could probably turn out a striking handsomeness if she needed to, despite still being deceptively petite. Clint had kept his unfortunately broken nose, and the two seemed to have switched hair styles. Loki herself was a couple inches shorter and kept her hair at her mid-back, the lines of her body moderate. She could change that, of course, but if she wasn’t using it to manipulate sexist boors, she preferred to remain lithe, close enough to her masculine form but still obviously female.

Once they reached the Tower, she allowed herself a little fun adjusting her brassieres to fit the Avengers. Steve’s became blue with two small stylized shields, suggestively placed on each cup. For Thor she mercilessly picked out something low-cut and frilly, although she was nice enough to make them both clasp in the front. Bruce’s was solid green but sensible because he was already anxious and uncomfortable, and Loki was not foolish enough to provoke him further. The brassiere she took down to the lab for Tony was all frothy red lace, though. She may have been harboring a desire to see him wearing it, and very little else.

Loki grinned as she stepped into the workshop, twirling the lingerie around one finger and calling out, “Stark!” The former playboy would probably be disappointed if he were anything short of busty and curvaceous. The smile slipped off her face when she caught sight of Tony curled up on the couch in the back of the room with his head between his knees. As she got closer, it was clear that he was panicking.

Loki sat next to him, brushing his hair out of the way to place a hand steadily on his back. “Breathe, Anthony.” She gently tilted him forward so he was leaning over, rubbing circles over the middle of his spine. She counted him through it until Tony was calm enough to prop his elbows on his knees and rub his hands down his face.

“Fuck.” He tilted his head to peer up at her. “Loki?”

She smiled at him, still stroking his back a little. “Indeed.”

“Please tell me you can undo this.”

“Of course.” She chose her next words carefully. “I cannot do so immediately, however. It would also be easiest for me to lift the spell from all affected parties at once, although it could be done on an individual basis if you needed me to.”

He nodded, scrubbing at his face again, missing the scratch of beard. “I don’t…I don’t know. How are the others taking it?”

“Barton seems to be treating it as a novelty. Everyone else is in varying states of discomfort.”

“Not you though.”

“Well,” she conceded, “this is me. My gender has always been fluid, and I had been considering making the change anyway.”

Tony’s gaze shifted to the floor. Loki was dealing with him so _nicely_ , had just come out to him so easily. It was a little bit mortifying that she in particular had found him having a crisis over what was in the end a silly accident, but maybe…maybe he could tell her and she would understand. “I, um. I was born in a female body. I always knew that I was a boy, though. My dad…Howard wanted a son, so he paid for my transition and everything. But I don’t…really know that you could call him supportive. It was always a dirty secret.”

Tony remembered the way it had stung to be called Howard’s “greatest creation” in that video, as though he was one more thing his father had built. The worst part about it was that it was true. Howard had told the world that he had a son, and he’d made sure that it believed him. Tony had grown up being told exactly how to act, and how not to act. There was to be no crying, no whining, no dolls or flowers or learning to cook, nothing remotely feminine. _Stark men are made of iron._ And always implied but never said out loud, _You_ do _want to be a man, don’t you?_ As soon as he was even slightly old enough, Howard had thrown his weight and money around to get him the best and most thorough possible procedures, and the secrecy required to make sure it never got out. Howard was the reason Tony got to live the way he did.

He glanced up at Loki, worry squirming in his chest. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

Loki pulled Tony sideways into a hug, meeting his eyes seriously. “I swear I shall not, unless it becomes an absolute necessity.”

“Thanks.” Tony sagged against her, only now realizing how nervous he’d been revealing that, and how much relief there was in having it accepted.

Tony had pretty much never come out to anyone regarding his gender in his life, and he’d carefully kept his entanglement with queer circles to the bare minimum required to get himself the occasional quick fuck. Identifying as transsexual would mean admitting that there was a time when he was not male, and Howard had absolutely forbidden that. The board could handle a few minor sex scandals, but that would have locked him out. The only other non-medical professional who knew was Rhodey, and that was because it had become impossible to maintain his single college friendship while hiding his frequent hospital visits, and Rhodey had been worried enough to threaten administrator involvement. By the time Tony had been working on one of his Masters and old enough that other students would actually be interested in him, there wasn’t much left to hold him back, and he’d built himself a playboy reputation on enough alcohol to blur memories, a healthy dose of suggestion and rumor, and nimble enough fingers to hide the fact that his erection came from an implant when he did have sex. He didn’t regret any stage of his transition, but it was impossible to know if he’d have chosen to live more openly if things had been different.

He glanced down and sighed, staring at his breasts. “I really hate these things.”

Loki reached for the brassiere she had left on her other side, working a quick transformation. “Here.”

Tony blinked at the red half-tank top in his hands.

“It will flatten your chest.”

“Oh.” The corner of his mouth tugged up, and he pulled away from Loki to yank his shirts off and shimmy the binder on, grateful once again that he’d finally been able to get the arc reactor removed. “Uh, crap.” The good feeling took a pause when he got himself stuck.

Loki smiled fondly at him and helped him get it down the rest of the way, double checking that it fit correctly. She pulled his hair out and back away from his face while he positioned himself more comfortably, running her fingers through the dark tresses. “I can cut this as well if you like. Cosmetic changes will not affect removal of the spell.”

Tony looked back at her, frowning. “You don’t have to. This is already so much better.”

“You are still dysphoric.”

“Yeah, but—”

Loki put a finger against his lips. “No buts. Let me cut your hair.”

Tony sat on the floor of the workshop with his back to Loki’s knees while the goddess cut his hair into something short and slightly messy with a pair of golden scissors she had summoned from somewhere. He fidgeted and finally blurted out, “Seriously, why are you doing this?”

Loki sighed and snipped another few strands. “Asgard has long been aware of people who were born into a body of the wrong sex, and our physician mages have developed a procedure to redress such biological errors. It is done once and then presumed that treatment is complete. What they did not understand was that how I felt could change on a basis of months or years. I was often told that I was only doing so for attention. It did not matter how well I learned to change my shape, my identity was invalidated. There were days in which I chose, or else I was forced, to be foreign in my own body rather than deal with what people thought of me.” Her hands stilled in Tony’s hair. “I would not wish the same upon you.”

She whisked the clippings brusquely from Tony’s neck and shoulders, and he stood to pull his shirts back on. A little curl of happiness took up residence in his chest at the thought that Loki wanted him to be comfortable, before he pushed it away. It was just because of their shared experience.

“I will need a large portion of your floor space,” she informed him. “Also for one of those affected to sit still as reference.”

Tony nodded, gesturing to the back two worktables. “Those can be moved. And I guess I should take readings of myself anyway. For science.”

Loki summoned a box of whiteboard chalk to hand, then pushed the tables out of the way. She considered the space for a bit, pulling half her hair back and clipping it into a bun to keep it from falling in her face while she worked. Finally she beckoned one of Tony’s robotic lab assistants over from where they were watching in their charging docks.

“U, come here.”

The robot trundled over, trilling curiously.

“Are you able to rotate in place?”

U beeped happily, spinning itself in a circle to demonstrate.

“Lovely.” She handed it a piece of chalk. “I need you to draw a circle on the floor for me. As large as you can.”

Gingerly taking the chalk, U carefully extended its arm straight out and then lowered it to touch the floor, starting to scoot itself around. Tony sat on a stool and watched Loki talking to his bot like a real person, the way no one else seemed to do besides Tony himself. The goddess was no longer wearing her armor, instead in a sheer green blouse with the sleeves rolled above her elbows and the top two buttons undone. She stopped U just short of completing the circle, crouching down, and Tony was distracted by the flash of skin underneath the lacing that ran from waist to mid-thigh on either side of her leather pants. He wondered what that meant about her underwear, and then Loki lifted U off the ground and boosted it across the chalk line so its wheels didn’t smudge anything and Tony had to stop thinking about that before his thoughts went to places they really shouldn’t be going.

Fortunately JARVIS chose that moment to remind him to specify what readings he wanted taken and what project folder to put them in.

“Yeah, uh, display energy levels but save the biometric results for later. Name this one the Tiresias Incident, put it on the secure server.”

He tuned back in to see U go zooming over to the charging station holding up the piece of chalk Loki had let it keep. There was a minor commotion as U showed off its prize before giving it pride of place in its collection of favorite junk, jealously fending off DUM-E’s attempts to take it. The bots loved Loki, always distractible while she was in the workshop and mopey after she left. A present from her must be like mana from heaven. Tony could relate, but still he pointed a finger at them.

“Don’t make me come over there.”

Loki smiled at U’s antics before pulling another piece of chalk out of the box and getting to work on the pentagram. She’d never done one to fit six people before, and even curving the lines of the star to leave as much room in the center as possible it would be a tight fit. At least it meant her sigils would not have to be so large as to be unwieldly. Again, she left a gap in her figure, stopping short of connecting the point of the star that sat just to the left of the break in the outer circle. These would keep the pentagram inactive until it was complete and ready to be used. Then she stepped to the outside and began filling in the runes she would need for a purification and restoration spell, starting to the right of the incomplete point and moving widdershins.

When she glanced up to check an aspect of the transformation, she found Tony watching her instead of his data. His eyes dragged up from her hips by way of her chest when he noticed her looking, and she smirked. He cleared his throat and shifted, waving a hand as if to dismiss the interaction. This dance between them was nothing new, but arousal responses in the wrong body were certainly not comfortable.

“So do I get an explanation, or are you just gonna casually break the laws of the universe on the floor of my workshop without so much as a by-your-leave? Which, rude.”

“I am hardly breaking the laws of the universe. But I shall take pity on you and explain.” This was not strictly true. Their conversations were invariably fascinating, both of them finding a common language in advanced physics. For the first time Loki had found someone who understood the turns of her mind. Sometimes they skipped whole points in their arguments just to see if the other could keep up. Explaining what she was doing to lift the spell on Tony and the rest of the Avengers was hardly a burden.

She filled in a section of runes and moved on to the next one. “As I have said before, magic is the control of energy through the exertion of one’s will. This,” she gestured at the chalk design on the floor, “is simply a mnemonic device. I have laid it out in the traditional pattern, but there is no reason a mage cannot create their own so long as its connotations are significant enough to them to result in accurate and effective work.”

She went on to describe the meaning behind each aspect of the spell’s design, filling it in as she went. The outer circle marked the boundary of the magic to be worked, and the points of the star stood for the five elements arranged according to the cardinal directions. Loki rolled her eyes and redefined them as energy, liquid, plasma, gas, and solid when Tony pointed out that The Five Elements sounded rather alchemical. The relationships between adjacent points gave rise to five foundational concepts and their attendant qualities, which were defined as creation/volatility, internal states/adaptability, transformation/mutability, external states/instrumentality, and growth/fertility. The runes in between the star and the outer circle described the relevant existing conditions, and the sigils in the points of the star determined how they were to be changed. The two were drawn facing outwards and inwards respectively, both in the counter-clockwise direction.

“Why counter-clockwise?” Tony asked.

“Because it is significant to the Asgardian school of magic.” Loki moved to the inside of her pentagram, drawing sigils and subordinate runes in four points of the star, leaving blank the one designated to symbolize energy. That one would be filled in when the spell was ready to be activated.

“Really?” Tony leaned a cheek on one fist, looking highly dubious about the whole thing. “It’s not just because that’s, say, the direction you naturally write in?”

“Well, yes, but as I said, this is the tradition of a particular school of magic. It is simply one way of aiding mages in creating complex, premeditated spells, with the ability to adjust them before they take effect. Imbuing every aspect with significance may also help novice mages harness the power they require.”

“What, like, if you believe hard enough, anyone can do magic?”

“Of course not. If one has no power of their own, or their soul is not attuned to _eidr_ , no amount of knowledge or belief will allow them to effect change. However, if one does possess these qualities but lacks the strength of will to believe they can bend the world to their whim, then rituals and props may become useful.”

“So all mages are arrogant bastards.”

Loki grinned back at Tony. “It is a pity you have no talent.”

She finished her last sigil and stood, stepping to the outside of the pentagram. Setting the chalk down, she laced her fingers together above her head to stretch her back and shoulders, raising up onto her toes. This was why she did not often use magic that required a fixed design.

“So what does it say? The words are the actually important bits, right?”

“Mm, it is not meant to be read as a text per se. Meaning is added by the properties of the section the runes are in, and grammatical structure is generally implied, but a loose translation might look something like this.”

She powered on one of the holo-tables and brought up the keyboard to type out, _“enemy/hostile/foreign mage [created] discord/disconnect (to) [internal self], counter/opposite [adaptability], (through) forced unwanted/nonconsensual [transformation] (of) physical human [external body], (which) blocks/impedes [instrumentality], (in) unwanted, wrong/dead-end [growth].”_

“This would be the outer circle of runes. The sigils are less coherent, given they do not together describe a singular state but rather each an aspect of change. Each point has one or two primary sigils that may be qualified by additional runes which also relate to the properties symbolized by that point. Those would translate as follows.”

Beneath her first section she made a list:

  * _healing (from growth)_
  * _(movement towards) memory_
  * _purification (of energy)_
  * _cleansing/(reflection of) inner self_



Tony hopped off his stool and came to stand by Loki’s side to read it. She couldn’t help but find the way his head tilted slightly to the left when he was considering something rather endearing.

“This doesn’t say anything specifically about gender.”

“No.” Loki thought she knew what Tony was worried about, if his body had been biologically female and then later surgically and chemically altered to present as male. “The intent is to dispel the magic already upon you, not to layer another change on top. You will retain all the effects of your transition.”

“Cool.” Tony nodded. He pointed at the first section of words. “How come so many of these have multiple meanings? Is this implying you have a single set of runes that describes someone as specifically being an enemy, hostile, _and_ foreign all at once?”

“Yes. Although, I am writing in the dialect of Asgardian used specifically for magical purposes.”

He glanced up at her. “You have your own _dialect_?”

“We mages like both precision and efficiency.”

“Yeah, but at some point that’s gotta become unwieldly. There’d be no way to remember even a decent fraction of the language.”

“Indeed there is not. Given that a single dictionary spans several tomes, most mages use them solely as reference books and do not bother to learn more than their most frequently used terms. However, being made to memorize sections of the dictionary is a common form of punishment in Asgardian magical instruction. Needless to say, I have a very large vocabulary.”

Tony snorted. “Right.” He took a deep breath, then let it out. “I guess we should call the others in now.” He tried to remind himself that everyone else was in the same boat and all of them were uncomfortable. No one would be judging him, and no one needed to know about his gender identity. “Uh, should I take the binder off?”

“No,” Loki said immediately. “And should anyone be so unwise as to comment, I will maim them.”

Tony felt himself flush and had to remind himself again that it didn’t mean anything. It was just because they were both queer. Anyway, he shouldn’t be condoning Loki’s violence. She was supposed to be rehabilitating. “Please no serious or permanent injury for my sake.”

Loki rolled her eyes. “Fine. But I will not be so kind if they smudge my chalk.”

The rest of the team trickled in with the clothing that had also been affected by the spell, and Loki directed them to stand together in the center of the pentacle. Clint showed up with understated makeup, probably done by Natasha, and Bruce had found hair clips to supplement the inexpert bun he’d made with Loki’s hair tie. Thor and Steve were still mostly wearing their armor and uniforms, given that those were the only clothes that had changed with them and nothing else would fit.

When they’d all squeezed into the pentacle, Steve glanced around and down at the chalk line in front of his toes. “Uh, Loki? I don’t think there’s enough room for you.”

“Of course not,” she said dismissively. “ _I_ deflected that spell. This was simply a convenient opportunity for a transformation I was going to make anyway.”

“Great. Am I the only one who’s got a bad feeling about letting Loki do wiggly-woo on us?” Clint asked.

“Hush.” Loki pointed her chalk at him. “This will work equally well if you are injured.”

Crouching outside the circle, she quickly closed the gaps in her lines and then drew her personal sigil inside the empty point of the star, indicating the power source for the spell. As soon as she finished the last stroke, the pentacle flashed green and sent a puff of chalk dust into the air. Loki felt the accompanying drain on her magic as the spell took effect.

The Avengers regained their usual forms with various expressions of relief. Loki was mildly insulted by the tone of surprise.

“You are still not allowed to touch my chalk,” she told them, standing. After she reclaimed her lingerie from the relevant people, most of them filed back out again. Debrief was unanimously scheduled for the next morning.

“Right, well, I wanna go make sure all my parts have come back correctly.” Tony waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “You good in here?”

Loki pulled open the supply closet in the back of the workshop. “I need to cleanse the area I used and then I shall be done.”

“You know, somehow, you holding a bucket and a mop was not an image I ever considered.”

Loki sighed, put-upon, closing the closet door with her supplies in hand. “One should not simply leave spells lying about. It is irresponsible and also a liability. There is magical residue here that needs to be dispelled.” This was another reason why she did not do this type of magic frequently. “To that effect, I need to make use of your paltry herb selection.”

Loki disappeared, and shortly reappeared grumbling about the quality of Midgardian spices. Tony watched bemused as she took over his refueling station, filling the bucket and throwing in slices of a lemon and a couple of sage leaves. From what he could tell, she didn’t approve of all of their herbs being dried, or possibly it was that they were improperly dried, and also that there wasn’t enough variety available. Maybe he should start a potted herb garden in one of the less frequented sun rooms. Loki would like that. Of course, Tony had killed every plant he’d ever owned, but he could set it up for her. Maybe he could get Bruce to help, he would know how things like that worked, right? He snapped himself out of it and filed the thought away for later when he heard the word “turmeric.”

“Wait, hold up, what did you say?”

Loki glanced over at him, putting down the dried rosemary she’d been angrily contemplating. “That I would like to have fresh turmeric, as it is particularly effective in purification.”

“I have some of that. Down here. It’s good for you, so I put it in my smoothies a lot.”

Loki crouched down to rifle through the contents of the workshop's mini-fridge. Her face lit up when she pulled out the orange root. “This is perfect.”

Tony clamped his mouth shut on the urge to reply with a questionably witty flirtation, trying to find an excuse to stick around.

“Sir, perhaps now would be a good time to take baseline measurements for comparison to those of the recent incident,” JARVIS suggested.

“Yes! Right, do that. Thanks, J.” JARVIS was the best.

Loki minced some of the turmeric root and added it to the bucket, stirring to infuse the water with cleansing magic. When it was ready she took it over to her pentagram, carefully wiping away the now greenish chalk lines. Keeping her eyes on the movement of the mop, she said, “Anthony…”

“Myeah?”

“If you would like… When I was first coming to terms with the fluidity of my gender, I made a study of the spells used in Asgard to change one’s physical sex. If you would like, I could apply them to you.” Loki continued to watch the floor for a few moments before she looked up to gauge Tony’s reaction.

Tony was staring, his brain cycling through the possibilities of what a transformation like that would mean. All of the health risks he would no longer have. The doses of testosterone he would no longer need to take. All of the secrecy, all of the worry about being found out, or being inadequate, being called fake…all of that could go away. He could have a real, actually functioning dick. He could have children. His brain stalled a little on that one. Children were probably a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want them—that he hadn’t wanted them for a long time, when he wasn’t drinking the desire away. He could have that.

“Anthony?”

“What’s the catch?” he croaked. He wanted this, badly, and he was trying not to. There was such a thing as being too good to be true.

Loki leaned on the mop, choosing her words deliberately. “The original wording assumes a very static binary model of gender. I would have to modify it to accommodate the transition you have already made. I could potentially attempt more major changes if you wanted only a partial transformation. However, I have not studied medicine, and while I am skilled in transformation magic, my preference tends towards a more personal approach. Also, as I mentioned before, the procedure is meant to be permanent. Any mistakes would be very difficult to rectify. Despite this, I do believe that it is possible through the incorporation of techniques from the Elvish magic systems, which generally hold a less rigid view of the universe and are more focused around change and growth. This was an option I studied extensively when I was exploring my own gender expression, and while I eventually settled on another method, I think that it would work for you.”

“What happens if it goes wrong?”

Loki made a face. “The transformation could be partial or malformed. Or it is possible that you would end up with entirely separate organs. I am not certain what that would mean for your overall health. At best they would be sustainably integrated, at worst your body could reject them.”

Tony nodded, processing this. Ultimately, it didn’t sound much riskier than transition surgeries in the 80s, or the chances he took every time he put on the suit. Especially since he had Extremis to back him up.

“What do you get out of it?” came out of his mouth before he had time to consider that if he questioned the offer Loki might change her mind and rescind it.

Loki frowned at him, a mixture of confusion and concern on her face. “Nothing. I simply want you to have this.”

Things were rarely ever simple with Loki. Tony scrubbed a hand through his hair, sighing through his nose. “Look, this is big, even with…all of this.” He waved a hand to encompass his current appearance. “I don’t wanna have to _owe_ you—I mean, not if it’s gonna hang over my head as leverage. I can’t pay that back.”

“No!” Loki’s eyebrows shot up. “If anything I am the one indebted to you.” Her gaze shifted back to the floor. “I realize that I am here as punishment and have no right to expect anything from my keepers. You have every reason to hate me for what I have done. Yet you have given me a place to belong the likes of which I have found but rarely in all of my years.”

“What? No, Loki, that’s— Of course you deserve that, it’s just basic decency. I didn’t do anything special.”

Loki smiled wryly. “Truly, I do not know how you manage not to see what it is you do.” She glanced up at him. “We agree then that neither of us is under obligation. I want to give this to you, if you are willing to accept it. Please.”

Tony swallowed. “I hate magic. Let’s do this.”

Loki beamed. “Thank you.”

She quickly wiped away the last of the chalk on the floor, then summoned a thick leather-bound book to her hands. Setting it down on one of the worktables, she began flipping through the pages, marking relevant passages for reference. While considering a section she absently re-did her bun, pulling all of her hair up this time. Tony dragged himself away from the picture that was Loki concentrating intensely.

“JARVIS, I want a heavy-duty version of Extremis with my current epigenetic state as template ready to go as a failsafe. And I’m gonna want medical scans running the whole time Loki’s doing magic.”

“Noted, sir.” JARVIS brought up the Extremis data on one of the holo-tables, calculations already running to figure out the necessary changes to the virus. Tony stationed himself in front of it, fingers flying over the virtual keyboard to work in tandem with his AI.

“Sir, It may be impossible to retain stability in this mutation,” JARVIS warned.

“So have a dose of the neutralization serum on hand. Two-stage back up. It’ll buy me more time. I want as few unknown risks as possible, here, JARV.”

“Of course, sir.” Elsewhere in the workshop, machines powered to life synthesizing the formula Tony had engineered to save Pepper and then had kept on hand just in case. Tony himself already had a version of Extremis running through his veins, but it wouldn’t be strong enough to handle the type of eventualities that he wanted to account for.

By the time JARVIS was working on producing a serum they were confident of, Loki had sketched out a rough chalk structure on the floor. She sat cross-legged along one side of it with her book lying open at one hip and glowing green diagrams of the design hovering before her. The one off to her left seemed to be solely for reference, but as Tony watched, she duplicated the diagram she was currently manipulating in order to compare two different potential versions side by side. Flicking one away, she took the chalk from behind her ear to draw in a few more lines on the floor. Her diagrams bobbed around her shoulders as she shifted position, the left-hand one updating itself in real time.

“Your backup is ready then?” Loki asked mildly when she noticed him looking.

“Fabricating,” Tony replied automatically. “Not that I don’t trust you to know what you’re doing or anything, it’s just—”

“You do not trust lines of chalk on the floor?” She smiled a little. Before he could be embarrassed, she continued, “It is perfectly reasonable.”

Tony nodded, momentarily at a loss for words. Loki was usually, and understandably given her upbringing, touchy about any perceived doubt of her skills. She knew of course that it was unreasonable to expect full confidence from teammates who did not completely trust her and had no prior experience with magic, and she dealt with it smoothly out of long practice. Tony could see though, behind the sharply pointed words and scathing wit, the way each slight built up like sediment. He knew, because he had his own silt deposit at the bottom of his heart.

Mentally shaking himself, he tried to move on and not dwell on what it might mean that Loki was giving him a pass. “The real question here is what’s up with your illusions stealing my holo-table designs?”

Loki smirked at him. “Inspiration may come from even the most unexpected of places.”

“Excuse you, I am very inspiring,” Tony protested, and for a little while they bantered like normal.

Then Loki finished the lines of the pentacle. It was an intricate swirling thing that spread out in interlocking layers to take up nearly as much space as the first one had despite the fact that there was only enough room for a single occupant in the middle rather than six. Tony could barely identify the basic star-and-circle shape the design was predicated on. “You should step into the center now, before it grows too dense,” Loki said. “It is recommended that you sit.”

Tony gingerly picked his way through the chalk lines so as not to smudge anything and settled himself cross-legged while Loki began filling in runes and sigils and other symbols in complicated patterns, following an order that Tony didn’t understand.

“I will need details on your transition,” she informed him apologetically.

“Right.” Tony took a deep breath. He could do this.

It took a long time for the pentacle to be completed to Loki’s satisfaction between Tony’s halting explanation of his transition process, aided by JARVIS, and Loki frequently double checking both her overview diagram and her grimoire, which Tony learned was one of many books filled with her personal notes and dated from around the time when the Crusades had still been a thing down on Midgard. Tony was not much into paper, but he still made a note to figure out how the hell it had managed to age so well. Finally Loki stretched again and set down the stub of her chalk, waving away her illusions. She got up and poured two glasses of water from the refueling station, putting a slice of lemon into each and carefully handing one across to Tony. By this time his backside was sore from sitting on the concrete floor of the workshop, and he was both keyed-up and emotionally drained. He’d told things to Loki that he’d spent  most of his life actively hiding. He took the water gratefully, chugging half of it and then nursing the rest in silence.

Loki herself leaned back against a worktable, gathering her energy. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, feeling her magic well up from within, pooling in her core. She’d already used a lot of it today, and this transformation would be taxing. When she had centered herself, she opened her eyes and asked, “Are you ready?”

Tony gulped the last of his water, sitting up straight. In the background, JARVIS activated the medical scans. He handed his glass back to Loki. “As I’ll ever be. So you know, if something goes wrong, the vials of Extremis are over there. JARVIS will walk you through it.”

Loki nodded, settling back onto the floor facing him. “You shall have to explain how your virus works to me later.”

Tony managed to smile at that, the promise of science and a later lightening his anxiety. “The sooner we start, the sooner I can talk dirty to you, baby.”

Suppressing the brief flash of desire, Loki leaned forward slightly to place her hands over two palm-sized circles in the pentacle, fitting her fingers into the design. Taking a deep breath in, she let her magic flow with the exhale. This spell was not a flash and a puff of chalk, but was instead a green glow that spread out from her hands along the lines of the pentacle, slowly growing in intensity. She was peripherally aware of the medical scans hovering off to the side in non-urgent blue, but most of her attention was on steadily channeling her magic through the completion of the spell, her eyes going unfocused as she concentrated on the invisible plane of energy and intention.

Tony gasped as he felt his body start to shift, tingling all over. He remembered distantly Yinsen’s hands in his chest and he struggled to breathe. Now was not the time to freak out. He couldn’t afford to disrupt Loki’s magic with a panic attack. That would defeat the entire purpose. He just had to hold on and everything would work out. His eyes locked onto Loki’s face, trying to find something that would anchor him to get through this. The glow of her magic was just strong enough to emphasize her cheekbones and brighten her eyes, the green tint lending her an otherworldly cast. Tony’s magic- and adrenaline-addled brain transformed her into something like a savior.

Then it was over, the pins and needles feeling dissipating out through his extremities. Loki rested heavily on her palms for a moment before pushing back upright off the floor. The medical scans were still all in blue, within acceptable parameters. Tony felt weirdly normal. Everything seemed to be more or less in the same place, just…slightly different somehow, like it had been after Extremis had given him its full-body overhaul. He blinked hard to clear his head.

“How do you feel?” Loki asked, leaning back on her hands. Tony tried not to keep staring at her.

“Um, tingly.”

A smirk curled her mouth. “Mm, yes. It is perfectly normal for growing boys to experience—”

Tony flipped her off. “Screw you. You can’t even get up, can you?”

Loki stuck her nose in the air, putting on a haughty expression. “I fought a magical duel today and then successfully executed both the largest and the most complex pentacles I have ever attempted. You, on the other hand, have no excuse, save perhaps—”

“I am _so_ not old enough to have fallen and not get up,” Tony protested indignantly. “Just watch me.” He forced himself to climb to his feet, only to find himself trapped by the dense chalk surrounding him. “Uh, hm.” He wondered if he could make it by jumping.

Loki laughed at him and slowly got to her own feet, reaching out to help him across. She wrapped her arm around his back as he made the leap, pulling him close and pivoting to set him down on the outside of the pentacle. Tony felt like a swooning damsel, but he could hardly complain when Loki was right there and still stupidly pretty. She was always stupidly pretty, and brilliant, and attractive, but now that Tony wasn’t wrapped up in his own bodily problems, this transformation was making him _notice_ all over again. The way she was looking down at him while holding him in her arms definitely was not helping either.

“Right, um.” Tony took a step back. “I’m just gonna…”

Loki dropped her hold, letting him turn away. She moved her bucket with perhaps more force than necessary, mopping quickly, fighting down the flush on her cheeks. Tony had treated her exactly the same after finding out she was genderfluid, had still wanted her, even. Tony had been in her arms, mouth slightly open and leaning into her, looking up at her with wide amber eyes. It would have been so easy to lean down and kiss him. She knew what she wanted, though. Tony flirted shamelessly, and if she pushed it further she was fairly sure he would happily sleep with her. But Loki was selfish, and if she was going to have Tony she wanted all of him. She wasn’t willing to make her heart vulnerable only to be a notch on his bedpost.

Tony walked hastily over to the section of the workshop that had the detailed scanners, firing off commands to JARVIS to try to cover up just how flustered he was. He made himself stand still for the data collection, and then felt all of the kinetic energy drain out of him as JARVIS started putting up the results, highlighting things like Tony’s hip and knee shape, and the presence of a penis without an implant in it and a scrotum with a prostate gland and everything. There were a host of other smaller changes, in his endocrine system and elsewhere, but Tony couldn’t care about the details at the moment. He stuck his finger out for a blood sample, bouncing on his toes the whole time it was processing. When the results finally came up he felt his mouth drop open. The display read, “46 XY.”

It didn’t change anything, except that it sort of did. No one would treat him differently. No one would even know, aside from Loki and his doctor. But this was the icing on the cake, the final proof of validity. Seeing those words in stark blue, with JARVIS murmuring a quiet, “congratulations, sir,” in the background, it was the seal of approval, of perfection, that he’d never gotten from his father.

The problem with letting his mouth drop open, though, was that sometimes words fell out. Before he thought about it, Tony found himself saying, “I could kiss you right now.”

There was a pause, and then Loki’s voice from behind him in the workshop said, “What is stopping you?”

Tony whipped around to face her in surprise. “What?”

Leaning her mop against one of the worktables, Loki made her way deliberately across the floor to stand in front of him, green eyes intent. “I asked,” she enunciated clearly, “what is stopping you from kissing me?”

Tony felt like he was pinned to the spot by how close Loki was, the way she was looking at him. Half his brain seemed to have fled and the other half was scrambling to get it back. The only thing he had left to answer with was the truth. “Uh. Crippling insecurity regarding my ability to have functional romantic relationships and the fear that I’ll once again ruin one of my only strong friendships with inappropriate attraction?”

“You,” Loki breathed, leaning impossibly closer, so that there were only inches left between their mouths, “are a fool.”

She kissed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somehow, my first explicit smut is f/m. not what I woulda figured

Tony’s eyes fell shut as his body swayed into Loki’s, his hands grasping at her arms to keep himself there. Loki cradled his head, tilting him to the perfect angle as they deepened the kiss. Tony groaned a little as she sucked on his bottom lip, teasing him with hints of teeth. It occurred somewhere in the back of his mind that this might have been what Loki was angling for when she made her offer, but he couldn’t bring himself to care because he wanted this too. He wanted this so much and also, they were making out now. Tony liked making out, he could do making out. Except…except for that distracting feeling in— _oh._ Tony disengaged his mouth a bit, which only served to make Loki shift her attentions to his neck, and that was…very nice.

“Hey, hey,” Tony panted, undoing Loki’s bun so he could work his fingers into her hair, “you wanna do the honors of a test drive?”

Loki left off where she had started working on a hickey to grin at him. “It would be my pleasure.”

Bending at the knees a little, she hoisted him up by the backs of his thighs. Tony gasped, automatically wrapping his legs around her waist. “Oh, shit. JARVIS, put the workshop on lockdown.”

There was a murmured assent from the AI that Tony didn’t even process, too busy being indescribably turned on by Loki carrying him like he weighed nothing. She blatantly groped his ass before depositing him on the couch in the corner of the workshop and getting to work on his fly. Tony wriggled out of his jeans and helped push his boxers down, and then he stopped.

“Holy shit.”

Weirdly, the first thing he noticed was that the glossy mass of scar tissue on the inside of his thigh where the phalloplasty graft had come from was gone. Then he noticed balls and dick. Natal male balls and dick. Loki pressed a kiss to his cheek gently.

“Tell me if it is too much.”

Tony nodded, watching in fascination as Loki’s slender fingers wrapped around his shaft. His dick enthusiastically demonstrated its ability to become erect all by itself, flushing red and thickening. Tony’s hips pushed up of their own volition into Loki’s fist, her callouses catching. Holding his gaze, she pulled her hand away and licked her palm. When her fingers returned to dance along his shaft and down to massage his balls, a strangled noise escaped his throat. Tony was already breathing harder just from this, the sensation so much _more_ than he was used to. Loki’s thumbnail traced lightly along the vein on the underside of his dick before she circled the head with the pad, and Tony whined, his hips bucking again. His fingers scrabbled at the backs of Loki’s shoulders. He’d had some erogenous sensation before this, but his clit had been buried and only one of the nerves had been connected to his dick. He was beginning to suspect that it hadn’t really healed all the way if this was how much more intense it was _supposed_ to be. It was like his first time all over again, only about an order of magnitude better.

He pushed at Loki’s shoulder, gasping, “I want— Loki, fuck, I want your _mouth_.” Blowjobs were not something Tony had been on the receiving end of very often. He didn’t need people’s faces near his groin, where it would be impossible not to notice something. But now that he had the opportunity he was damn well going to take it. “’M clean, god, please.”

“I could not catch anything anyway,” Loki commented. Then she gave him one of the wickedest grins he’d ever seen and shimmied downwards.

Tony had a moment to realize that he may have gotten himself in deeper than he'd intended before Loki licked a broad stripe up his shaft and sucked him down. His head fell back against the arm of the couch and he buried his hands in Loki’s hair, groaning. He should have known she would be good with her tongue. She bobbed her head a few times, both of her hands working at his balls and the base of his dick, seemingly determined to melt his brain slowly with the wet heat of her mouth. Then she hummed around him and Tony’s hips jerked up, only to be held down tightly. Heat flooded south, tingling down his spine, and he went breathless at the casual strength controlling him. Loki did it again to the same effect, and when she glanced up to gauge his reaction, Tony swore he could read a smirk in those green eyes. Then he realized he could still feel Loki’s fingers on him despite both of her hands being firmly on his hips.

“Fuck,” Tony moaned, his mouth dropping open. Loki took that as the approval it was and went back to trying to kill him with sex. He lost track of what came out of his mouth after that, barely able to keep up with everything he was feeling.

Loki worked Tony thoroughly, drawing it out as long as she could without actually going so far as to edge him. He would be fun to tease, though, she thought, listening to the stream of profanity-laced praise coming from above her head. He definitely reacted well to being restrained. That was good to know. She was not above using that information and a little magical assistance to distinguish herself from anyone else Tony may have gotten head from. It wasn’t productive to be jealous of everyone Tony had had sex with, but she couldn’t help feeling it a little anyway. She was selfish, and if this was the reaction she got when she wasn’t even trying to overwhelm him too much, then none of his other partners were worth his time and did not deserve the wrecked tone to his voice or the flutter of abs and thighs as his hips struggled just so he could feel her hold him down.

She noticed through her magic when Tony’s balls began to draw up as he got closer to orgasm. From Tony himself she got only a single frantic tug on her hair in warning before he spilled into her mouth. She swallowed, smug at the thought that she’d successfully blindsided him with this. Tony cried out, shuddering and straining against her hands as she worked him through it. Suppressing a grimace at the bitter taste, she carefully pulled off, leaving some semen still in her mouth.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony was groaning in between heaving breaths, his hands over his face. “Fuck, I forgot that would happen now. God, I’m sorry—”

Loki gently pulled his hands away and kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. She didn’t generally do this, put off by anything that made a point out of deliberate mess, but it was worth it for the way Tony moaned in shock and surged up against her, clutching at the back of her neck. He chased the taste of himself hungrily out of the corners of her mouth. When they separated finally, he slumped back against the couch, grinning wide and sated.

“God, that was hot.”

Loki smiled, pleased with herself. “Just do not expect me to do so every time.”

Tony reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, ineffectually smoothing it down. “You got it. Gimme a minute to reboot my brain, and I’ll reciprocate.”

She couldn’t help rolling her hips a little as her arousal caught up to her, the heat pooled there flooding back into her awareness. Tony was a dangerous man. Even during her brief relationship with Sigyn, Loki had never been so focused on her partner’s pleasure that she forgot her own. When it resulted in Tony looking so happily dazed, though, she found that she didn’t mind so much.

“Of course.” She turned her head to watch him slyly from the corner of her eyes. “After all, I seem to recall you calling me a sex goddess at one point, which is not actually one of my titles, but I think an amendment could be made. Although that would naturally require some form of worship. Verbal adulation is well and good, but I think a more hands on approach—”

“Oh my god!” Tony pitched himself forward, batting at her, and Loki tumbled back laughing. “You are not allowed so many syllables!”

She made herself comfortable on the couch, challenging, “Are you going to do something about that?”

Tony kissed her on the best side of promisingly dirty. “You bet your glorious ass I am.” He ran his fingers down the lacing on either side of her pants, barely brushing the skin there. “This is hot, by the way. But how the _fuck_ does it come off?”

“Magic,” she said seriously, thumbing open the fly on the front and raising her hips to work her pants down over them, taking her thong right along with it.

“Screw you.” Tony had moved to her shirt buttons instead.

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a condom readily available?”

He stopped, looking at her. “Unfortunately, no. But when we get to a place with one, I am absolutely making use of it.”

“Mm, I think there might be some left on the common floor from the time Barton was demonstrating their uses.”

Tony had finished undoing her shirt and bent down to mouth at her stomach, following the lines of her abs. “Menace,” he accused lightly. His tongue dipped into her navel. “My favorite menace, though.”

He switched directions then to take off her brassiere, playing with her breasts as he kissed her again. She took the opportunity to tug his shirts off, letting her own hands wander. Eventually she bit his lower lip and he pulled back, stealing one last kiss.

“Impatient,” he teased.                     

“Yes.”

Tony kissed a path down her body before finally settling himself between Loki’s thighs, pushing his hands underneath her hips. The couch was not really large enough for this, so she hitched one of her knees up against the back, letting the other fall wide. Tony gave her one last grin, his amber eyes warm as he bent his head to lick at her folds. Loki let out a short moan at the sensation, propping herself up on one elbow to watch, reaching out with her other hand to card through Tony’s hair.

Tony may not have gotten a lot of head in his life, but giving it was something he could certainly do. He’d long ago figured out that none of his partners would look too closely or remember too much if he was a good enough lay, and he didn’t get to be that by not making sure the women he took to bed got off at least once before he fucked them. Eating pussy was his favorite way to end a party, and though it happened less often than the rumors implied, he was still practiced enough to do it well even while falling-down drunk. He wasn’t drunk now, though, hadn’t been in a long time, and he found himself wanting to _impress_ Loki. As though if he could do this well enough, he could convince her to stick around for everything else. Which didn’t actually work, he knew, but Loki had kind of melted his brain a little, so he was allowed to pretend.

He traced her labia, tasting her wetness, before dragging the flat of his tongue up in a broad stroke. Loki’s voice went breathy and high, wavering on wordless moans when he teased around her clit. Sealing his mouth over her pussy, he slid his tongue inside, curling it as he dragged back. Loki gasped and ground against his face, her thighs tightening. Tony tongue-fucked her a bit while he worked one of his hands free. Then he slid two fingers into her cunt, moving his mouth up to her clit, his nose buried in the thatch of her pubic hair. The barest graze of teeth made her jump and cry out.

“Anthony…nngh, more.”

Tony obliged, giving her another finger. He knew already that he would follow pretty much any order Loki gave him when she sounded like that. Starting up a rhythm thrusting in hard then stroking back slowly over the silken walls of her cunt, he pulled more intoxicating noises out of her. When he sucked on her clit, Loki convulsed, curling in towards him as she came. He replaced his fingers with his tongue, wanting to taste her pleasure, and Loki’s hand tightened on the back of his head, holding him there as he drew out the aftershocks of her orgasm.

When she finally let him go, he brushed tiny kisses over the inside of her thigh, suddenly anxious not to let the encounter end. He’d gotten a taste of what he wanted, and now he wasn’t sure if he could face finding out that this was the limit of whatever their relationship with each other had been approaching. Following the same old pattern of _jump into bed first, talk never_ may not have been the best idea when he had so much more riding on it this time.

Loki’s hands coaxed him out from hiding in sex, though, and when Tony finally met her eyes, her smile was tender. In his surprise, he allowed her to draw him up the length of her body. When she kissed him this time, it wasn’t as a sex act or even the lead-up to one, but like she was doing it just because she wanted to. Tony kissed back, gradually relaxing into it when Loki didn’t show any signs of further expectations. They ended up cuddled together half on their sides on the couch. Loki threaded one hand back into his hair at the nape of his neck, lightly scratching his scalp. Her other arm rested comfortably around his back. Tony’s top arm fit nicely into the curve of her waist and ribs so his thumb could sweep lightly over the side of her breast. As much as he had fantasized about Loki’s male form, he found he loved this just as much.

The events of the day finally came weighing down on him then, and Tony suddenly had no more energy. Just when he thought he could fall asleep right there in Loki’s arms, she drew back. He dragged his eyes open to find her just looking at him, her expression soft and with the same tender smile. She was looking at him like he was all she wanted, and that was terrifying because she was Loki, who had once wanted thrones. He felt desperately that he should say something, but he’d always been bad at emoting in words.

Instead what came out of his mouth was, “I have a refractory period now, don’t I?”

Loki’s smile widened into amusement, even as her eyes stayed soft. “Unfortunately, yes.”

Tony blinked as his thought process shunted sideways into scientific inquiry mode. “Do you think it corresponds to my chronological age, or my physiological one?” Extremis had knocked a couple of decades off of his biological clock, but he wasn’t sure if Loki’s magic had taken that into account. For that matter, he should make sure that Extremis was still functioning properly.

“I would be happy to help you find out,” Loki offered salaciously. “I want to ride you next.”

Tony had a sudden vivid image of Loki on top of him, pinning his wrists to hold him down while she took what she wanted. The rest of him was very much on board with this idea, but while his dick tried, it did, in fact, remain limp. Sexual avenues of further conversation weren’t available, then, and he’d been quite effectively derailed from science.

“Not that I don’t absolutely approve of sexperimentation,” he said slowly, before he could change his mind, “but do you, maybe…want to have dinner with me sometime? I mean, as in a date?”

Loki leaned in to capture his mouth gently, lingering close. “I want many dates with you, Anthony Stark.”

**Author's Note:**

> join me on [Tumblr](http://yumekuimono.tumblr.com)


End file.
